COSI actually has a really interesting history.

Sandy Halleck worked for one of the best advertising firms here in this area, but had a love of science.

He visited Mosai, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, in about 1957, and he thought Columbus needed an experience like that.

As he was thinking about doing that, he realized, okay, I'm gonna need some kind of.

Some powerhouse energy and some support for that.

Herschel Stephan was very active, helping get some of the power players of Columbus.

Together and might say selling them on an idea of a museum.

My dad was Herschel Steffen, and when Sandy had this idea about COSI, he and dad talked.

And dad was interested in it because he was on the board of the historical society.

So he shared his proposal, got some support there.

So then he went to the Franklin county commissioners, got them to say, okay, we'll put some skin in the game.

We'll fund some of this, and then went to some of the titans of the area, in particular, Walter English, then, of course, Preston Wolf, the head of the incredible dispatch empire.

And so they fleshed out a full proposal, including sketches, diagrams, et cetera, for how they were going to take Memorial hall and give it a secondary life as the first science museum in the great city of Columbus.

The building itself dates back to 1906 and was part of a program to really recognize Civil War veterans and veterans of other wars.

By the mid 1950s, it was beginning to become a little obsolete, and the main reason was the new vets Memorial was built west of the river.

With the competition from the new Vets memorial, the building's future was uncertain.

The Franklin County Historical Society really was looking to the future in terms of reusing an existing building.

This was something kind of unheard of.

We were building just new stuff all the time in those days and kind of ignoring our historic buildings.

So with a vision for the future, you have to credit the Franklin County Historical Society for saying, we can reuse this building.

They renovated that building, and we opened our doors to the public on Easter Sunday in 1964 for $0.25 if you're.

A kid or $0.50 if you're an adult.

You can go to this wonderland of science called the center of Science and industry.

And on that first day, they had over 5000 people on that day.

It was an exciting time in our community, and it was accepted quickly.

Some of the things I remembered was actually walking into the building, and it was a grand building, but what I loved about it was it was also kind of cramped and filled with things.

So you could go from one thing to the other.

My personal favorite was the street of yesteryear.

I used to love to walk up and down the old time street of the recreated downtown, and they had free movies in the movie theater.

I'd sit and watch Laurel and Hardy movies.

I loved it.

We programmed it such that we would do different activities seasonally.

Like in the fall, we would have cider pressing, and we had a paper making shop up there and a little tin shop.

A second fan favorite is the Foucault pendulum.

This is a device that we still have in the current cosi that swings back and forth.

It was a swinging pendulum that would knock down little pegs that had been set up, and it was a means of illustrating the rotation of the earth.

I frankly don't understand the principles yet today, but it was a lot of fun to watch and wait for the little peg to get knocked over.

One of the things that dad did that was sort of unique was the World's fair was in New York in 1964, and he called up the president of travelers and said, what are you going to do with that big exhibit of yours at the world's fair?

I'd like to have that.

For Columbus, it was the history of man from the early primeval days to today.

And Sterling Tooker, who was then president of the travelers, said, well, sure, you can have it for the center of science and industry.

That's fine.

Something that I loved when our son was young was the coal mine.

I swear he thought he was going down an elevator into coal mine.

There are several neat things with this new concept for the city of Columbus, these interactive exhibits.

So you go in, press a button, pull a lever, have an experience of some kind.

But also they had facilitators, and they had two kinds of facilitators.

They had facilitators who were either scientists or kind of scientists, adjacent educators who were able to teach to you in an interactive way about a given principle.

They also had theatrical people, and they would do these shows that would really illuminate some important science phenomena or technological changes that have happened throughout time.

CoSI was running out of space.

It had been a huge success.

They put a special front on the building, kind of a solar front for capturing solar heat.

They'd made alterations to the building, but really were outgrowing it and decided they needed a new location.

So much like the first iteration, they were looking for a site for the second iteration of COSI.

They selected the school called Central High, which was one of the four pillar high schools in the city of Columbus.

Central closed long before and had been vandalized.

It was in terrible shape, but well built, and certainly it could be reused.

Now, the whole building wasn't reused.

A portion of it was taken down, including the auditorium, but the main part pointing toward downtown Columbus with the enclosing arms and the recessed courtyard and the main facade with the classical columns, that was all retained.

And then Cosi was built onto the back of it.

To form the new Cosi building, we.

Engaged a world renowned architect, Arata Isusaki, who did a wonderful job in building the building that we're in today.

So the new building opened in 1999 to the public right here in the peninsula.

And what was great about it is we brought some of the old iconic things, like streets of yesterday, also called progressive.

So a lot of people missed the old street of yesteryear in the old building.

What we did was we kind of took that concept and we adapted it here.

We've got Hope street here and Fear street.

And what we've done here is recreate very similar to the street of yesteryear, a late 18 hundreds street.

Where it differs from the old street is when we go through this transition up here.

And what we have here is the same streets, hope and fear street, in the early 1960s.

So it really highlights the technological differences between those decades.

The idea for this building was really to create these, we call them learning worlds around various topics like life and ocean and energy.

And it was interesting architecturally with the building.

The architect wanted to keep the circulation spaces kind of devoid of activity.

And the concept was that when you step into these learning worlds, they'd be really, really impactful what we experienced.

Instead, as our guests were saying, man, I walked through the halls, and it feels very sterile.

So you'll see.

Over time, we started bringing experiences out into those circulation spaces.

So there's activity for people to do when they're walking between exhibits.

And this is where the magic happens.

This is our exhibit, fabrication shop.

Hey, Adrian.

Hey, Brian.

How you doing?

I'm doing great.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Can you share with us what you're involved in now, Adrian?

Sure.

We are adding a new experience for a dinosaur exhibit.

Pick this one up.

So we wanted something that would help our visually impaired guests be able to interact with our dinosaur exhibit.

Currently, a lot of these things are just look, don't touch.

So if you can't see them, how do you learn from it?

So we're taking 3d scans of existing skulls that we have in the dinosaur exhibit and then 3d printing them to a smaller scale and having them accessible for a guest to touch along the reader rail so those who are visually impaired really can take part in this experience and learn from it.

Very cool.

And this is just the first step.

So this is a trial.

If things go well with this, we can add these types of experiences throughout the museum.

That is really cool.

Adrian.

I love working at a place where people are equally passionate about what we do and what we represent to the community.

Depending on what the task is, we all pull together and make this place work.

The one team philosophy, that's how we were born.

And we've continued to foster that up to our present day and even strengthen that.

54321.

Welcome to Cosine.

Tremendous amount of respect for all of our presidents.

But it's kind of funny because I would share with my friends, you know, what Cosi needs.

Cosi needs like, a Jack Hannah for science museums.

And then doctor Frederick Bertley comes along and we have that in spades.

All right, Sydney, Lori, what is this?

And why do we have a snake at cosine?

You bet.

This is Montoya, and he is a boa constrictor.

And we use live animal ambassadors is to talk about the world around us.

The science of animals and using live animals is a powerful way to connect to our guests with a lasting impression and education that they'll take home with them.

Well, as a life scientist, I totally appreciate Montoya from a distance.

I think we have some other animals we can check out.

We do.

Yeah.

Come on up.

All right.

You got it.

So come up on stage.

We are about to present our wildlife rescue program.

So this is in partnership with the Ohio wildlife.

As a part of our program, we do feature native wildlife, and one of the favorites that we have here at Cosi is our little owl, archimedes.

Archimedes, look at that.

What a cute bird.

Oh, my goodness.

So this is a native species that we have right here in Ohio.

And by showing guests our owl here on stage, we're able to connect them with wildlife that they wouldn't typically get to see, but also get to teach them how they can interact positively with the wildlife that is in their neighborhood.

Okay, so what else do we have here?

We have a really cool animal that you can also find right here in central Ohio.

Mister Nigel is an animal you've probably seen in your neighborhood.

He is trained to walk along our stage here.

He is a fan favorite, but it's the only marsupial that we have here in the United States that is really cool.

So CosI's mission is to engage, inspire and transform lives and communities by being the best partner in science technology industry learning.

A very important partnership that COSI has is with our schools.

So many schools come to COSI to have their teachers lead a classroom through the walls of this great institution and allow those students to observe our exhibits.

But also we take information to those schools as well and partner in the classroom with curriculum and also our science kits.

So the evolution of museums, in our case, science museums, how do we think about our content in a way that it's useful and accessible to people beyond bricks and mortar of your building, whether that's locally in central Ohio, in the rest of the United States, or even beyond internationally?

Hello, Katherine.

Hello, Valerie.

Hey, doctor B.

How are you?

Good, good.

What are you all working on?

Right here?

We are playing around with a finch robot.

This is a really cool device to teach coding to kids from five years old up through college.

Wait a minute.

This one little structure can teach kiddos from five years all the way, way past me into college?

Absolutely.

We can use this with kiddos all the way up through teaching JavaScript and Python.

So it's a great way to introduce coding as a career and as an activity to anybody who wants to try it.

This is totally, totally cool.

Can I get one of these from my office?

Absolutely.

You're on.

You're on.

And obviously we play around with virtual reality.

Talk to me about this.

Yeah.

So this is our growing VR program.

We have learned how to take people out into the International Space Station, float around in space, or even go down into the deepest ocean and explore things that we can't do physically, but we can take anybody who is interested out anywhere they'd like to go.

Doctor Ivany, thank you very much for that.

That was awesome.

Such cool stuff.

Come on, Katherine, what do you do here at cosi?

So I'm the manager of special education experiences.

I'm part of our education partnership team.

So a lot of what we do is leveraging our fantastic partnerships to help support the disability community because it's really important that they have every bit of access to science that the rest of us do.

And so whether it's our education programs, being able to use all our facilities and just be able to gauge no matter who comes through our door, to be able to be a part of science, that's amazing.

So when we say at COSI, science is everywhere and for everyone, you are literally the tip of the spear that makes sure we can accommodate everyone, correct?

Absolutely.

As a scientist who loves history, one of the things that excites me the most is when you look in a rear mirror and you see the amazing technological discoveries, for example, over the past 60 years and where we are today.

And then to envision with the tools we have now, where we're going to be in the next six decades, that's really exciting.

And you can't help but be a student of history and study that art to know as advanced as we are today, oh, we're continuing on that trajectory, and that's really exciting.

As a community member, I looked at Cosi as a young adult when I first arrived in the city as a fun place to come and play.

As a mom, I look at Cosi as a wonderful place to bring my daughter, to allow her to explore.

And now, as a business leader, I look at Cosi as an important asset for the city of Columbus and the region around it to grow and recruit talent to our great city and give our citizens a place to just go and dream and enjoy themselves and hopefully learn a little something about science and math and dream about what could be.